Open Call: Art Action Academy in Dublin

ARE YOU AN ARTIST OR CREATIVE PRACTITIONER BASED IN EUROPE?

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN CHALLENGING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS ABOUT SEX WORK?

If you answered yes to both these questions, THEN YOU SHOULD APPLY TO ATTEND OUR DECEMBER ART ACTION ACADEMY!

The Center for Artistic Activism and the Open Society Foundations in collaboration with the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE) invites artists (and creative practitioners of all kinds) interested in challenging dominant narratives about sex work, to apply for a 5-day Art Action Academy to be held in Dublin from the 13th to 17th of December 2016.

Many artists want to create work that has a social impact. Unfortunately, organizing a successful social-change campaign often isn’t part of an artist’s education. The Art Action Academy (AAA) will help socially-engaged artists make their work more impactful and better evaluate the effect of their work. Using a range of contemporary examples of organizing and activism from around the world, participants will study the ways cultural creativity has been employed for social change. We will explore ideas from cultural theory to cognitive science to mass communications. We will learn to apply these ideas through a mix of classroom style presentations and practical exercises designed to unlock our imaginations from the prison-house of the possible – and then to figure out how to make the impossible into reality, through new strategies and tactics. The workshop will culminate in a collaborative creative action on the 17th of December – the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers. The goal of the AAA is not merely to impart knowledge, but to access, organize and operationalize the creative, cultural and political resources possessed by artists themselves. In brief, the goal of the AAA is to have participants own their method to further develop as successful artists and effective activists.